China has had a remarkable period of rapid growth shifting from a centrally planned to a market based economy. Today, China is an upper middle-income country that has complex development needs, where the Bank continues to play an important development role.
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This paper utilizes a countrywide,
county-to-city upgrade in the 1990s to identify whether
extending the powers of urban local governments leads to
better firm outcomes.... Show More + The paper hypothesizes that since
local leaders in newly-promoted cities have an incentive to
utilize their new administrative remit to maximize gross
domestic product and employment growth, there should be
improvements in economic outcomes. The analysis finds that
aggregate firm-level outcomes do not necessarily improve
after county-to-city graduation. However, it does find that
state-owned enterprises perform better post-graduation, with
increased access to credit through state-owned banks as a
possible explanation for the improvement in performance. The
most important finding is that newly-promoted cities with
high capacity generally produce better aggregate firm
outcomes compared with newly-promoted cities with low
capacity. The conclusions are twofold. First, in terms of
access to credit, the paper provides evidence that relaxing
credit constraints for firms could lead to large increases
in firm operation and employment. Second, increasing local
government's administrative remit is not enough to lead
to better firm and economic outcomes; local capacity is of
paramount importance. Show Less -

This paper investigates the impact of
land tenure insecurity on the migration decisions of
China's rural residents. A simple model first frames
the relationship among... Show More + these variables and the probability
that a reallocation of land will occur in the following
year. After first demonstrating that a village leader's
support for administrative land reallocation carries with it
the risk of losing a future election, the paper exploits
election-timing and village heterogeneity in lineage group
composition and demographic change to identify the effect of
land security. In response to an expected land reallocation
in the following year, the probability that a rural resident
migrates out of the county declines by 2.8 percentage
points, which accounts for 17.5 percent of the annual share
of village residents, aged 16 to 50, who worked as migrants
during the period. This finding underscores the potential
importance of secure property rights for facilitating labor
market integration and the movement of labor out of agriculture. Show Less -

By the end of 2013, China railway had
built a network of about 10,000 route-km of high-speed
railways (HSR). The network has been built rapidly and at a
relatively low... Show More + unit cost compared with similar projects in
other countries. This note takes a look at this expansion,
its construction unit costs and some of its key cost
components. It also outlines reasons that may explain the
comparatively low cost of HSR construction in China. Show Less -

The trend toward ever greater
urbanization continues unabated across the globe. According
to the United Nations, by 2025 closes to 5 billion people
will live in urban... Show More + areas. Many cities, especially in the
developing world, are set to explode in size. Over the next
decade and a half, Lagos is expected to increase its
population 50 percent, to nearly 16 million. Naturally,
there is an active debate on whether restricting the growth
of megacities is desirable and whether doing so can make
residents of those cities and their countries better off.
When analyzing whether megacities have become too large,
policy makers often analyze a single city in depth. But no
city is an island: improving urban infrastructure in one
city might attract migrants, and a negative shock in one
location can be mitigated because people can move to
another. Considering the general equilibrium effects of any
such urban policy is thus key. That is, when deciding
whether to make medium-size cities more attractive, policy
makers need to understand how cities of all sizes will be
affected. The second section briefly summarizes the
theoretical framework and discusses which data are needed.
The third section implements the methodology for the
benchmark case of the United States. The fourth section does
the same for China and Mexico and compares the findings. And
the last section concludes. A technical online appendix
guides the reader through a practical, step-by-step,
discussion of how to do the analysis. Show Less -

Urbanization deserves urgent attention
from policy makers, academics, entrepreneurs, and social
reformers of all stripes. Nothing else will create as many
opportunities... Show More + for social and economic progress. The
urbanization project began roughly 1,000 years after the
transition from the Pleistocene to the milder and more
stable Holocene interglacial. In 2010, the urban population
in developing countries stood at 2.5 billion. The developing
world can accommodate the urban population growth and
declining urban density in many ways. The most important
citywide projects -- successes like New York and Shenzhen --
show even more clearly how influential human intention can
be. The developing world can accommodate the urban
population growth and declining urban density in many ways.
One is to have a threefold increase in the average
population of its existing cities and a six fold increase in
their average built-out area. Another, which will leave the
built-out area of existing cities unchanged, will be to
develop 625 new cities of 10 million people -- 500 new
cities to accommodate the net increase in the urban
population and another 125 to accommodate the 1.25 billion
people who will have to leave existing cities as average
density falls by half. Show Less -

The Country Opinion Survey for FY2012 in
China assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better
understanding of how stakeholders in China perceive the WBG.
It... Show More + provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national
and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies,
media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in
China on 1) their views regarding the general environment in
China; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in China;
3) overall impressions of the WBGs effectiveness and
results, knowledge work and activities, and communication
and information sharing in China; and 4) their perceptions
of the WBGs future role in China. Show Less -

This discussion paper provides the
analytical backdrop for a series of papers on managing
climate- and weather-related risks in China. It reviews and
synthesizes the... Show More + growing literature on risk-based management
approaches to climate change adaptation and offers guidance
on a process for decision making. Managing risks from severe
weather, present-day climate variability, and future climate
change is integral to China's development. While the
effects of future climate change are deeply uncertain, this
uncertainty should not preclude action. Risk management is
in essence a process for designing, implementing, and
evaluating policies in the face of such uncertainty. The
paper begins by defining key concepts and establishes the
context for climate risk management and adaptation in China.
It then outlines a step-by-step process for a risk centered
approach to adaptation. The focus of the process is on
planning for adaptation, not policy implementation. The
papers that follow in the series take the general framework
set out by this paper and apply it to different sectors,
including transportation, water utilities, urban planning,
and forestry. Show Less -

China is already the world's
largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and transport is the
fastest-growing source of these emissions. The international
energy agency estimates... Show More + that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
from China's light-duty transport fleet will rise from
65 mega tones (MT) in 2005 to nearly 300 MT in 2020, an
increase of 290 percent. In addition to contributing to
global climate change, the rapid adoption of motor vehicles
in China is also causing growing urban congestion and air
pollution. Indeed, national level policy makers have begun
to shift directions towards promoting public transport and
providing safe environments for walking and cycling as way
to improve urban accessibility and address local, national,
and global environmental concerns. Yet, despite this shift
at the national level, many municipalities lack the tools,
knowledge, and resources to effectively address these
issues. This publication aims to bridge that knowledge gap
by providing a guide on how to improve non-motorized
transport (NMT), which is walking and cycling, at the
neighborhood scale. The neighborhood is the basic unit of
urban development, and as such, in aggregate,
neighborhoods' spatial arrangements and physical forms
have a high impact on citywide transport practices. The
publication centers on explaining a series of basic urban
design concepts and features that make NMT-friendly
neighborhoods, and therefore can help improve accessibility,
and reduce CO2 emissions and pollution. In a first section,
seven basic concepts that make up a NMT-friendly
neighborhood are described in a concise manner, and images
of how they have been implemented all around the world are
provided as examples. In second section, a case study of
applying those concepts on a real neighborhood development
project is presented, to showcase the contrast of
traditional neighborhood development practices in China and
NMT-friendly, low carbon neighborhood development. Show Less -

Notions of urban prosperity and
modernity have always been closely associated with urban
form and transport. The skyline of a city, the presentation
of its buildings,... Show More + streets, parks, and public spaces, are all
essential aspects of how a city is conceived by its
residents and non-residents looking from afar. Since
economic reforms were first introduced in the late 1970s,
China has experienced an unprecedented process of economic
development, and the transformation of its cities is a
testament to that process. As Chinese cities began to grow
in size, the initial approach to address transport demand
was to follow the model of many cities in industrialized
countries and provide increasingly more and more facilities
for private cars for example, widened roads, new
expressways, and multilevel intersections at the expense of
public transport and non-motorized transport. In its
collaboration with different Chinese cities on urban
transport matters, the World Bank has promoted the
implementation of an integrated corridor management
approach, in which improvements to public transport
infrastructure and services are paired with enhancements to
walking and cycling amenities, traffic management, and
traffic safety, to build on synergies in the delivery of
more efficient, safer, and environmentally friendly urban
transport. This publication focuses on the role of urban
design in improving transport efficiency and urban
sustainability. Building on experiences and knowledge from
cities all around the world, the publication showcases a
series of urban design and city planning concepts that will
play a key role in the successful implementation of the
integrated transport corridor approach in China. In the
first section of the publication, the rationale behind
different urban design concepts such as transit-oriented
development (TOD), bus priority design features, and
pedestrian oriented design (POD) is discussed in detail. In
second section, the application of these concepts in one of
the Bank's integrated transport corridor management
projects is presented, through the end-product of an urban
design workshop conducted in support of the Qinghai - Xining
Urban Transport Project. Show Less -

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate
substantially exceeded China's population growth, which
averaged 1.4 percent annually between 1978 and 2009, and
real GDP per... Show More + capita accordingly grew at 8.6 percent annually
during this period. China's urban population resides
primarily in city districts (shiqu) and town districts
(zhenqu), which constitute the urban core of larger
administrative units called cities (shi) and respectively
towns (zhen). Cities and towns in China are expansive
regions, with administrative territories much larger than in
the rest of the world (Chan 2007). Cities are conceptually
equivalent to counties in the U.S. and thus the whole of
China's territory is basically covered by 287
prefecture and provincial level municipalities, which within
their area include 654 city districts - the cities proper in
the conventional sense of this word - and 19,322 towns. Each
town in turn includes a town district - an urban core that
occupies a fraction of the town's area but accounts for
most of the town's urban population. While cities and
towns as a whole overlap in their administrative boundaries,
with multiple towns nested within each city, city districts
and town districts are disjoint structures, being urban
embryos within the administrative boundaries of
territorially larger cities and towns. The main purpose of
this study is to examine the development and features of
town districts (zhenqu) - the urbanized core of China's towns. Show Less -

Recent accidents have brought attention
in China to the issue of school transport safety. This note
reviews the practice in countries with established school
transport... Show More + systems, takes a look at the current state of
school transport safety in China, and recommends specific
actions for China to improve its school transport services
and systems. Specifically, this note argues China's
school transport could be improved through changes to the
institutional framework, the strengthening and enforcement
of the legal and regulatory framework, as well as enhanced
communications and awareness. By adopting a national plan
with clear targets and milestones, safer school transport
could become a reality for China's primary and middle
school-aged children who travel to school on a daily basis. Show Less -

This paper reports on the survey
undertaken by the Center for Rural Development Policy of the
China Agricultural University, with the support of the World
Bank, and... Show More + UNFAO. It provides input as to how rural land
registration systems might be used, and as a potential and
timely input into the design of large-scale piloting
exercises. The field survey, carried out in townships and
villages in Anhui and Shandong provinces, was based upon a
series of interviews with individual rural households, and
structured discussions with focus groups, which included
government officials and other stakeholders. The findings of
this survey show an increasing trend in rural land
transactions, land disputes, and a consensus on the need for
a registration system. The report provides recommendations
and policy advice in the following sections: Section 1
presents a summary of the findings of the focus group
discussions, while Section 2 provides a summary of the
findings from the interviews with individual farmer
households. Section 3 attempts to place these findings in
the broader national context and draw conclusions and
recommendations. Annexes, including the lists of discussion
topics and template questionnaires, are provided at the end
of the paper. Show Less -

Accessibility is a fundamental measure
of benefits of urban life; In essence it measures the end
benefit of the integrated transportation and land use
system: how many... Show More + destinations (generally jobs but also
shops, schools, entertainment, and recreation facilities)
can be accessed in a given time using a given mode of
transport. Increasing accessibility, bringing people,
opportunities and goods within easy reach of each other, has
always been the fundamental role of cities. This document is
a brief summary of the latest work completed in this series.
The document provides a description of a pilot project in
Wuhan, China to demonstrate the value of accessibility
metrics in the urban planning decision making process,
including a description of the tools used and policy lessons
generated. The primary purpose of the exercise was to
demonstrate the practical applications of these tools for
use in understanding transport and land use dynamics in
World Bank client cities. Show Less -

The next several years are critical for
achieving lasting results in China's relatively new
energy efficiency program for public institutions. Public
institutions in... Show More + China are defined as those government
agencies, public service units, and organizations that
either fully or partially receive government budget funds.
In the study team's opinion, key challenges for
China's public institution energy conservation program
for the medium-term might best be summarized to include the
following four: (i) completing program institutional
infrastructure, (ii) making further inroads in the huge task
of completing energy use data collection and diagnostic
analysis in China's many public entities, (iii) further
improving incentives and generating greater enthusiasm among
public entities for action, and (iv) expanding financing
options for public entities, especially using energy
performance contracting (EPC). Plans already exist to
address the first two challenges and emphasis should be
placed on quality of implementation. Efforts dealing with
the third and fourth challenges, improving incentives and
expanding use of energy performance contracting, also are
parts of China's current agenda. Meeting these two
challenges in particular will require creativity and
development of new approaches. Consultation of international
experience in these two areas may be particularly helpful,
and this receives special focus in this report. Show Less -

The rich cultural heritage of China is
an essential touchstone of its collective identity. The
country's archaeological sites, historic architecture,
expressive arts,... Show More + cultural landscapes, and ethnic diversity
also are treasured around the world. Despite their
importance, China's cultural assets are under
tremendous pressure due to the country's rapid
development, particularly its rapid urbanization. Moreover,
rising incomes and mobility have significantly increased
domestic tourism, leading to the overdevelopment and
deterioration of cultural heritage sites. However, many of
China's government officials, conservationists, and
community groups have recognized these threats and, over the
past several decades, have worked tirelessly to protect
their country's cultural heritage. Based on the 12
projects developed under this partnership, this report
presents an overview of the project approaches and
experiences, takes stock of the challenges, extracts initial
lessons learned, and identifies new directions and
challenges ahead. The principal audience of the report is
national, provincial, and municipal decision-makers engaged
in conserving China's cultural heritage. This report
also is intended to be of relevance to World Bank staff and
those in the international community who wish to gain an
overview of the projects conserving cultural heritage in
China that have received World Bank financing. Show Less -

Ningbo serves as the Chinese pilot city
for the World Bank Climate Resilient Cities (CRC) Program.
The CRC program aims to, prepare local governments in the
East Asia... Show More + region to better understand the concepts and
consequences of climate change; how climate change
consequences contribute to urban vulnerabilities; and what
is being done by city governments in East Asia and around
the world to actively engage in learning capacity building,
and capital investment programs for building sustainable,
resilient communities. This local resilience action plan
(LRAP) had four parts. Part one investigated natural hazards
weather observations and climate models. Seven key climatic
parameters were selected: temperature, rainfall, drought,
heat wave, flood, tropical cyclone, and sea level rise. Part
two examined how the city functions, and pursues
socio-economic development through a city vulnerability
assessment. The qualitative, city vulnerability assessment
was based on five sectors- people, infrastructure,
environment, economy, and government. Each sector was
analyzed extensively on a range of issues, and compared to
other similar Chinese cities to more accurately judge its
performances. Part three is the gap analysis. It was
performed to understand the government actions and their
effectiveness to respond to natural disasters, and whether
the current and planned policies and programs address the
current and future climate change impacts and natural
disasters. This part was supported by the following
inventories: inventory of natural disasters, and inventory
of policies and programs. Part four therefore was to develop
recommendations for each of the city vulnerability sectors.
The 70 plus recommendations are specific to Ningbo's
vulnerabilities and risks. They are described briefly,
intended to serve as an introduction. Feasibility studies
are recommended before further action or implementation. Show Less -

The Chinese approach towards planning
and implementing involuntary resettlement is unique,
containing some distinct characteristics that are the
consequential responses... Show More + to the evolution of its land
policies and institutional systems in the past few decades.
There are two key sets of factors underpinning this
approach. The first relates to its land tenure system and
the second its institutional organizations in rural areas.
As China moves along its modernization agenda, these two
sets of factors have been evolving continuously and rapidly
in its fast changing social and economic landscape. These
factors have constantly called for corresponding changes or
adjustment to its approach in planning and implementing
involuntary resettlement programs. This note covers linear
infrastructure projects other than reservoirs and focuses on
land policies and resettlement applicable to rural areas. It
aims to provide an overview of these changing factors that
underpin the Chinese approach and characteristics in
involuntary resettlement planning and implementation for
linear infrastructure, at both policy and ground practice
levels. It also analyzes how the latest development of the
land tenure system and rural social organizations challenges
the current planning practice of involuntary resettlement. Show Less -

The goal of this project is to collect
data and develop methodologies and a spreadsheet tool for
comparing lifecycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas
(GHG) emi... Show More +ssions of alternative urban transport projects and
systems (i.e., single or combinations of urban transport
modes) serving a typical Chinese city, with an application
to Kunming's subway line no. 3. This project is
commissioned by the World Bank under its 'China urban
transport, energy efficiency and climate change
program,' which aims to mainstream the climate
consideration in urban transport planning and investments.
This report provides the intellectual context of the
project, introduces the conceptual framework and the
spreadsheet tool, and comments on preliminary findings from
running the spreadsheet tool using data from Kunming. Show Less -

The vast majority of China's
population lies to the southeast of a line running from
Beijing to Sichuan. This entire region is subjected to major
floods each year, while... Show More + typhoons affect the southern and
eastern coastal areas and major earthquakes affect the
western and northern margins. The average annual direct
property damage is estimated at approximately USD 15
billion, and when combined with other immediate economic
losses, including business interruption, disaster relief,
and other costs, is considerably larger. As with other
sectors, insurance in China is growing rapidly, with a
compounded annual growth rate of 25 percent since 2001. The
property insurance industry, nevertheless, is
underdeveloped. Total property premiums in China are about
USD 15 billion, whereas the losses from the Wenchuan
earthquake alone are likely to exceed USD 100 billion.
According to most estimates, only 5 percent of property in
China is insured, primarily among commercial and industrial
users. When it comes to private dwellings, it is estimated
that today only 1 out of 100 is insured against natural
hazards. Clearly, the current property insurance market in
China is dwarfed by the nation's need for catastrophe
risk protection; at the present level of insurance
penetration, China's insurance industry cannot provide
significant compensation for large natural hazards losses. Show Less -

The purpose of this report is to provide
an overview of the current situation of brownfield
management in China for World Bank staff and relevant
government officials... Show More + in order to help raise awareness of
land contamination and help develop remediation activities.
After the introductory section, section two explores the
environmental and development pressures of land. Section
three reviews government plans, targets and actions. Section
four discusses the regulatory framework for brownfield
remediation and redevelopment in China. Section five
analyzes organizational setup and management procedures, as
well as the stakeholders in brownfield management. Section
six offers a brief review of the status of brownfield
remediation technologies in China. Section seven looks at
the cases of Beijing and Chongqing. Finally, section eight
evaluates Chinese practices, discusses areas for
improvement, offers recommendations, and concludes the brief. Show Less -